Regret
by YellowRosesAndHearts
Summary: Tommy after Unsweet sixteen. Yes, I know that episode was forever ago, bear with me please. One shot.


1**_Okay, so this has been sitting on my computer collecting dust since January. And I figured, why not submit it? I know the episode "Unsweet Sixteen" was, like, last year, but this is a post ep. Okay, guys?_**

_**DISCLAIMER: Nothing's changed since I wrote more of contact. I still wish they weer mine, they still aren't, and I'm still planning the large scale kidnapping. Anyone interested should still hit me up.**_

It was a dumb idea, but he'd left his Viper in the parking lot of the Record Company- turned sixteenth birthday party- paradise. He knew that he would regret that in the morning, but that regret hadn't set in yet. It was a twenty minute walk to his house, and he needed the time to think. Not that he wanted to think about it really– he didn't want to remember how hard she'd been crying just a few hours ago, and how much she probably still was. But he needed to be prepared for whenever Jude would decide to dredge this up again. Because if he knew her at all, she definitely would.

He didn't want to explain to her how much more complex their relationship was now. And it was really his fault; after all, he'd been the idiot that decided to kiss her. That kiss. It was haunting his every waking thought since it happened, and try as he might to erase it from his mind, he continued to rewind and fast forward that blissful scene until it became imprinted on his brain, and he found himself unable to get it out. He didn't want to remember it because that made it real– and he wasn't sure if he could deal with never being able to get that again, never being that close to her again. Yet if he had any hope of having any type of professional relationship with her in the future, he'd have to ditch this romantic one at the door.

He didn't even want to think about the legalities of it– about how people would say it was professionally, morally, and in all other ways wrong for a twenty two year old man to be entertaining any thoughts what-so-ever about a sixteen year old girl. Sometimes, he'd let himself forget her age: mostly when she sang and unleashed that unbelievably developed and mature voice on him. She seemed far too mature to be only sixteen, and the only rationale he could give himself was that when she sang, the woman inside her came out. But he couldn't use that for an excuse tonight– there was no possible way he could have missed the glaring fact that she was only sixteen-- it was, after all, her birthday party. All he knew was that he'd never seen her cry like that, and it had gotten to him. It split him completely in half to see her out in the rain, crying, drenching and destroying that beautiful green dress without even caring. And yes, that dress. The sleek green silk that had gracefully hugged each delicate curve, inciting fantasies within him that he didn't want to own up to. And he remembered Kwest telling him to "pick up his jaw" but he hadn't, not quite. And that heartbreak– Shay carelessly breaking her heart, cheating on her with Eden, the woman she hated most. Eden, of all people, without any regard to how much it would destroy her. Who did things like that? Who treated people so recklessly? Oh yes, he did.

_Way to add insult to injury, Tom Quincy. Good job._

Not that he'd meant to. He remembered her telling him that she was easy to give up, and asking him, HIM, how to fix it. What was she thinking? Was it not glaringly obvious how much his feelings for her had grown in the past weeks? He guessed not. Somehow he'd wanted to convey this to her, and had gone immediately for the physical. The lingering, desperate kiss that followed spelled disaster for their professional relationship. He was, after all, her producer. And yet in the moments immediately after, before the severity of what he'd done set in, he'd almost been relieved. He'd kissed Jude. Maybe now he was cured of whatever spell she'd held over him, and they could get on having a brother-sisterly like relationship.

_Fat chance. You'll be lucky if she ever speaks to you again._

Now, the kiss had never happened. He'd taken it back completely– or tried to at least. He'd knelt holding her hands, put his forehead on hers, and told her that if he was ever going to be her producer again, the two of them would have to agree that it had never happened. And she'd cried harder, saying "No" and "I can't" and he almost didn't blame her. She was, after all, a girl who had recently had her "first real kiss." But if anything could destroy them, this could. If there wasn't any sense of professionalism between them, they had no hope of finishing the album. Though at this point, he severely doubted whether the album was on her mind at all. Three seconds from tears himself he had begged her, begged her like he had never begged a girl in his life. "Jude, say it" he had said quietly. And when she shook her head and cried harder, he'd said louder, "Jude, say it." and whispered gently to her "Please." The moment when she agreed was bittersweet. Maybe the kiss had never happened, but he had just added himself to the presently growing list of guys in Jude's life who were disappointing her. Which was the last thing he wanted to do.

All in all, when he'd slid dejectedly in his bed that night, there was not much he'd done that day that he could, in retrospect, be proud of. Still, as he stared up at his ceiling, his thoughts changed from over intellectualizing to almost longing. And when he drifted off to sleep, his last thoughts were of her lips.

_**Hmm… I don't like this as much as I did when I first wrote it. But whatever. I love me some reviews.**_


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